Daniel Tammet shares his art and his passion for languages in this glimpse into his beautiful mind.
Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia, which means “that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world.” The author of Born on a Blue Day, Tammet is also a linguist and an educator. He is also the founder of Optimnem, a website that has “provided language learning instruction” to thousands of people around the globe. Tammet explains, “Language evolves in such a way that sounds correspond with … the personal, intuitive experience of the listener.”
Daniel is considered especially unique among people who have “severe autistic disorders,” in that he is capable of living a fully independent life. It is, in fact, his “incredible self-awareness” and ability to communicate what it feels like to live in such a unique way that makes his story so profoundly powerful.